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Day-to-day life within an empire consists of the deceitful leading the disengaged. Although when the artifice shielding a nationâ€™s populace from the ruthlessness of their leaders begins to fall away, hysteria and displaced rage rises in the land. Ergo, in the American empire, weâ€™re witnessing these demented days of congressional boy love and despotic rockets.

Day after day, the pace at which insane tidings arrive quickens: itâ€™s as if weâ€™ve become passengers on a high-speed train, commandeered by lunatics, that only stops at insane asylums in order to board more lunatics ... Naturally, the train has gone runaway, careening down the buckling tracks, blue spark spraying from its steel wheels, while any approaching curve becomes a threat to derail the whole hurdling madhouse.

For many years, these episodes of mass psychosis have been gaining velocity. Empires are inherently bughouse crazy, because, by their very nature, they grow conservative to the point of becoming totalitarian. After a time, the singular raison d'Ãªtre of this form of pathological conservatism is to fiercely cling to the things it has gained through expansionist practices and policies. In addition, it must find ways to rationalize the brutal and deceitful means required to sustain itself.

Accordingly, when its imperial ambitions are thwarted, rage and
hysteria will seize both its elite and hoi polloi alike. The ensuing
scene is similar to an inmate riot in the cafeteria of an insane asylum
when the traditional Saturday night dessert of chocolate pudding has
been withheld.

At this point, in the brutish life of an empire, the term conservative
becomes a misnomer. What exactly is being conserved by policies of
expansive militarism and environmental and imperialistic plundering?
That is -- other than conserving policies of expansive militarism and
environmental and imperialistic plundering? To claim this is
conservatism is analogous to claiming that an army of rampaging fire
ants are, only, at times, prone to becoming a little excited about
their property rights. Since when is a rampage regarded as a worldview?

We have endured an era reeking with the miasmal runoff of â€œconservative
valuesâ€ spewed by these toxic totalitarians, as, all the while, they
have employed classic Orwellian Newspeak as a means of perfuming its
stench, thereby terming their brazen acts of exploitation â€“ freedom,
and calling their smash-and-grab economic looting -- free enterprise.

Yet, the conservative mind is obsessed with the notion that life could
â€¦ should -- must! -- be returned to the values of a simpler, purer
past. Perhaps, this is a compensatory fantasy, an attempt to escape the
enervating machinations of their own rationalizing minds: a desperate
coping device that allows these scheming cartels of aging frat boys to
be in deep denial of the ruthless desires of their own rapacious ids.
Among their pathological wishes is: the compulsion to slip the entire
planet a date rape drug then, along with their frat house brothers,
molest her.

Indeed, itâ€™s unnerving to realize: we are being ruled by a collection
of totalitarian, frat rat, date-rapists endowed with the introspective
capacities of rampaging fire ants.

For the conservative (oxymoron alert) imagination itâ€™s a psychological
imperative to believe in the possibility of returning to a more moral
past (even if this Helicon land never has nor ever will exist). This
variety of cognitive dissidence, roiling the minds of those at the head
of our one party, corporate state, in combination with the rapid
dissemination of spurious information and contrived imagery ubiquitous
in the mass media, has suffused contemporary life with an unreal
quality. Within this bubble, weâ€™ve become benumbed; consequences become
diffuse; history and political acts carry no more weight for us than a
television commercial for chewing gum or toilet paper.

Although in diametric opposition to our weightless misapprehensions: To
live in these times is to be subject to the madness of an era wherein
those possessing personality profiles matching those of Grand
Inquisitor TomÃ¡s de Torquemada have been given access to high-tech
surveillance devices, the plunder-prone European imperialists have
global communication satellites at their disposal, and Genghis Khan has
the means to solicit the duplicitous talents behind public relation and
advertising firms to re-brand his image.

If the corporate media had existed in Khan's era, it doesn't strain
credulity to imagine the 13th century's equivalent of CNN's Kyra
Phillips â€“ who, during the invasion of Iraq, asked the attending
physician of an Iraqi child who had lost three limbs and suffered the
loss of his entire family as a result of the so-called Shock and Awe
bombing campaign: "Doctor, does he understand why this war took place?
Has he talked about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the meaning? Does he
understand it?" -- This is tantamount to asking the orphaned children
of lands sacked by the Mongol hordes -- if they understood the glory of
the Great Khan's Operation Enduring Plunder.

Itâ€™s small wonder the conservative keepers of the present order insist
that the world must be returned to what it was ... But, inevitably,
when these fervent desires are thwarted, the desire grows into an
endless feedback loop of aggression, accompanied by more
self-justifying lies -- thereby creating the self-resonating circuitry
of thwarted triumphalism and perpetual paranoia that passes for the
belief system of the contemporary conservative â€¦ As, all the while, the
feedback loop continues to build in pitch and intensity, growing ever
more insistent that the world be changed back to what it never was to
begin with ... and then, again, being thwarted by reality ... then,
exponentially, building in pitch and intensity ... rinse and repeat ...
ad infinitum ... ad nauseam ...

Psychologically, it becomes all too much for the conservative mind to
bear; therefore, the attempt is made to cope by means of displacing
one's anger, as well as, projecting oneâ€™s hidden desires upon the
people of distant countries and scorned groups within the culture. In
short order, the war drums thunder; the flesh of the eraâ€™s designated
witches hisses from the flames of public burnings; and pathetic sorts
such as pedophile Mark Foley must carry all of our darkness.

These are examples of the epic cognitive dissonance borne by
self-destructing empires. Ergo, if the zeitgeist were personified and
was granted a thought process mirroring the belief system of
contemporary conservatism, the poor bastard would have to be provided
with massive doses of anti-psychotic medication to be prevented from
roaming the streets raving (or, at least, as in the case of Rush
Limbaugh, Oxycontin to sustain his ravings on rightwing hate radio).

Or: Provided with employment as the engineer of this rattling death
train of a runaway empire. And what of us -- the passengers aboard the
train -- what instructions have the madmen manning the locomotive given
us, during the harrowing course of this doomed ride: They have advised
us to hold on tight to our values. Insanely, a frightening number of
credulous sorts seem to have accepted their instructions; accordingly,
they're desperately gripping the armrests and handrails of the trainâ€™s
passenger compartments, in the thrall of a mass delusion that such
actions might keep them personally out of harm's way, as well as serve
to hold the careening train itself on the tracks.

Then what are a few of these much-vaunted values that we so ardently
believe will save and sustain us? First off, as recent events have
revealed, we Americans are a people who are united in our firm and
abiding conviction that pedophilia is wrong.

This might lead one to the conclusion: If only we had collectively
engaged in online, sexually innuendo-larded chatter with Iraqi
teenagers -- instead of killing them â€“ we might be able to workup some
moral outrage at ourselves. In our madness, our values inform us that
the lives of well over half a million Iraqis have no value. Obviously,
sans our sacred values, we Americans would most certainly become a
nation of morally suspect people.

Although, in an era where the culturally defining myths of
fundamentalist Christianity and corporate consumerism mix, merge, and
envelope us -- we do hold sacred the following value: We believe that
incessant self-promotion and successful salesmanship is close to
godliness. Ken Lay died for our sins of self-doubt. He slipped the
surly bonds of this earth and his soul rose to paradise where he will
spend eternity, close to our father, the cosmic CEO. Kenny boy is now
so close to The Lord he can hear The All-Mighty count his money. For
God so loved the world: He bought the company.

Here and now: on earth, as it is in heaven, the values of present day
conservatism inform us sinners we must, without question, embody a
godly consumer's credo: "I am what I buy; ergo, the facade I show to
the world is who I am. Perhaps, if I begin to believe this shimmering
lie deeply enough â€“ possessed of a saintâ€™s abiding conviction -- then
it will become an abiding truth.â€

In addition, in our secular dealings, we must endeavor to become
socially and agreeably dumb; this credo -- the ascendant and defining
credo of our age is: "The less you know the smarter you are." Let me
explain (very slowly for those reading this without moving their lips
and who are unable to wrap their big, snobby, reason-bound brains
around the concept): Time, in the corporate era, is more valuable than
intelligence; so it follows -- anyone who would waste valuable time
pursuing mere knowledge is stupid; therefore -- stupid is the new
smart. Got it, stupid?

In addition, one is expected, at all times, in speech and bearing to
render oneself non-threatening to the bullying corporatist and
religious order -- or join the ranks of the bullies and cheer them on.
There is an added bonus in this choice: You get to call your hate, fear
and bigotry -- "values."

Our values are as precious to us as life itself. Accordingly, one and
all can see how precious life is to us by the realities of our present
day healthcare system. Also, our values include honest, hard work. Many
of us value work to such a profound degree that the ruling class
corporatists have allowed us to hold down two or even three, low-wage,
zero-benefits jobs so that we can vainly attempt to make ends meet.
What sorts of values are these? Who has the time to answer such a
frivolous question -- we have to get back to work.

But we the people of The United States know this much: There are
people, very bad people, in this world, who want to destroy our values.
And there are consequences for this. For example, the people of Iraq
are suffering so badly due to the fact that their belief in their false
god has made them a callous and cruel people. So much so, that it
leaves them indifferent to the suffering of us Americans who feel a
deep sense of betrayal due to their cruel rejection of our charitable
desire to share our values with them.

Therefore, we're left with little choice but to bring on our
faith-based indifference to their suffering. Where would the people of
Iraq be without our values?

As an empire grows grotesque, its populace mirrors its ugliness in mind
and action. Yet, in this era of authoritarian corporate rule, just
below the level of our conscious understandings, weâ€™re aware of the sad
fact that all this nonsensical palaver about values is simply a
desperate gambit to keep reality at bay.

Why is it so difficult to face facts? Perhaps, because, in an age when
weâ€™ve lost any semblance of economic independence and have forsaken so
many of our rights and liberties â€“ what do we have left to call our
own? What we're left with are our values.

So what exactly are values anyway? Values are what the clergy and the
corporatists allow us to keep for ourselves -- after they've made off
with all the valuables.